Halfway through I stumbled upon a "countdown challenge" and thought it was fitting. Enjoy.

Ten

They stumble along the shore, trudging on in their desperate and irrational effort to get away when there is no getting away.

(It is such an abstract notion, still.)

There is noise around them – the loud, overwhelming noise of the world falling apart; and yet Jyn registers it only as coming from afar, as if she and Cassian are enclosed in a bubble where nothing is louder then their ragged breathing.

They are not running to get away, but merely to find their own place to die.

Nine

She has known it for a while, she just hasn't fully realised it, her mind occupied with the task at hand.

Now, Jyn understands it with all the striking clarity and impersonal detachment of a dream through which she moves as if she doesn't truly belong, there, under the Death Star looming enormous on Scarif's sky.

So this is what you see when you finally look up, she muses.

Eight

She doesn't even know if the Alliance received the plans.

She has to hope – rebellions are built on hope! she remembers, and on the efforts of anonymous people playing their small parts which come together, bit by bit, step by step – and Jyn has played her part.

There rest is up to the others.

(Is she being short-sighted again?)

(Ah, but it doesn't matter any more.)

Seven

Cassian and Jyn collapse on the shore, hand in hand, chest to chest; their first shared instinct is to clutch at one another, but after a moment their muscles relax marginally and they embrace more steadily, if still tightly.

(I'm not used to people sticking around.)

(Welcome home.)

Six

Jyn doesn't know, and yet there is a strange certainty in her.

She wonders briefly if it is the Force – if the Force really was with them – or if perhaps it is her personal victory that fills her with reassurance. She has gotten back at the man who had destroyed her family; she looked him in the eyes and told him he had lost by her hand, her, Jyn Erso, daughter of Galen and Lyra.

And she relished it.

Was it all it was about, in truth? Has always been personal, from the moment she saw the message and heard the old name, Stardust?

Would she have ever looked up, if her Papa had not pointed at the stars?

Five

Cassian was right about her all along.

(Some of us live it.)

Then again, was he not the same?

Briefly, Jyn wonders what made him look up, what it was he had lost; she will never know, and briefly, she regrets.

Four

She remembers her father dying in her arms; the anger she had felt for most of her life seems so far away now, and she is grateful she could meet him one last time.

(Maybe she will see him again soon; she's never really pondered these issues, either.)

In the last few seconds of his life, Jyn took him home.

Three

There is a type of peace found when you have exhausted yourself and can only await whatever is to come.

Had she the strength, Jyn would perhaps be panicking; perhaps she would be mourning her young life; perhaps she would try to tell Cassian everything that had not yet fully crystallised inside of her.

Since she doesn't have the strength, all she can do is hold him as they watch, numbly, the blast approaching them.

Two

Jyn raises her chin and strengthens her grip on Cassian's shoulder.

(A detached thought crosses her mind, it's beautiful.)

One

The explosion swallows them in a deafening cloud of light, and there is nothing.